


i was meant to be a device that listened

by postcardmystery



Category: Revenge (TV)
Genre: Biphobia, Gen, Murder, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-16
Updated: 2012-10-16
Packaged: 2017-11-16 09:55:18
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 946
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/538224
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/postcardmystery/pseuds/postcardmystery
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Pull the trigger,” says the voice of David’s daughter, and the phone is hot in his hand, his smile dragged taut, and he presses a key, ruins a man, does it every single goddamn time.</p>
            </blockquote>





	i was meant to be a device that listened

**Author's Note:**

> Trigger warnings for biphobia, violence, and murder.

He doesn’t do interviews. He doesn’t do friends. He doesn’t do anything more than one night stands. He keeps his head high and his smile higher, mocking and crystalline and with that sensual pull at the edges, and nobody knows him and nobody wants to. Maybe that isn’t quite how he likes it. Maybe this isn’t the life he’d choose, with a do-over.

This is not a story about do-overs. And,  _oh_ , doesn’t he know it.

 

 

“This is not a very funny joke, Ems,” he says, and as she pushes the gun into his hands her smile goes tight, says, “You need to learn.”

“How about I just don’t fuck any more psychos and we assume I’ll be fine?” he says, ignoring Daniel’s embarrassed cough behind him, and closes his fingers around cool, smooth metal.

“I prefer more intimate violence, don’t I, babe?” he says, and Emily rolls her eyes. He clicks the safety off with unsteady hands, eyes flickering hot, and Daniel Grayson doesn’t get the joke, Daniel Grayson never gets the joke, but that’s all in the game,  _is_  the game, if he’s honest, so he lifts his arms, feels the ghost of Tyler’s teeth in his neck, pulls the trigger.

 

 

Everything comes in patterns. Corruption is a pattern, love is a pattern, the numbers that flash unbidden behind his eyelids when his fingers find a keyboard, that move in quick, orchestrated time. Life is a pattern, and so is death. Even chaos, but then— maybe that’s just him, and him alone.

“I’ve no idea what any of that means,” David Clarke used to say, his smile kind and his eyes always, always on Nolan’s face, and Nolan would smile back, say, “Neither does anybody else. Guess that’s how you make a million.”

“Pull the trigger,” says the voice of David’s daughter, and the phone is hot in his hand, his smile dragged taut, and he presses a key, ruins a man, does it every single goddamn time.

 

 

“So?” says Emily, her dress short and white and sheer, her hair perfect, her eyes certain death, “Is he or isn’t he?”

“Name the place and the position,” says Nolan, loosening his collar, does not tell her that he’s an old hand at fucking in bathrooms and hotel rooms and the backs of bars, that he can have this man begging for him on his knees in ten minutes or less.

“How do you feel about a sex scandal?” says Emily, sipping her champagne, and Nolan raises an eyebrow, does his best to coo, “Are you worried about my share prices, Ems? Tech’s not like a hedge fund. People buy the best even if I get caught shooting puppies just for fun.”

“Fox News led a segment on you that actually used the word ‘deviant’ on Monday,” says Emily, amused despite herself, and Nolan shrugs fluidly, says, “Also, that. Who cares. I’ve slept with worse. How long has he been married and how many angles should our sex tape have?”

 

 

His first summer in the Hamptons was colder than any winter on record. His clothes were wrong and his hair was wrong and he stood all wrong, elbows sticking out and hands drawn in. Nothing about him said  _power_ , or  _money_ , or  _lock up your sons and daughters_.

He went back to New York, grew his hair, made himself lounge and smirk and felt better than ever, found a part of himself that he never even knew was there. The sneer was made for his face, the suits he rolled up and pushed off fit him better than anything he’d ever worn before.

He went back to the Hamptons and fucked a married senator in one of the Graysons’s many bathrooms. He went down on a socialite in her brother’s bed. Everybody knew his name but nobody wanted to know him. Everybody knew his name and nobody could slot him into one of their neat little boxes. Nobody loved him. Everyone did something almost like fearing him. Things change, things change, we all fall down— by hook or by crook or by the press of his finger, these people were his or no one’s.

“Infamy, infamy, they’ve all got it in for me,” he’d muttered to the mirror, fixed his hair, gone out to find another Harvard closet case to ignore him at parties. 

This is not a story about do-overs. Don’t tell him. He already knows.

 

 

“I’m not your sister,” says Emily, and he wraps his arms around his knees, says, “I’ve already got a sister. She’s much nicer than you.”

“How pleasant for her,” says Emily, sipping her tea, and Nolan grins, says, “Not really. Hate the bitch. Want to see the faces this utter loser made in bed?”

 

 

He wakes up and he wakes up and he still feels the knife in his arm, six stitches and a scar that’s never going to heal. He always falls for the ones he can’t have, but the joke’s never been this bitter before. He comes downstairs, robe loose and hair a mess, and she’s waiting for him, always waiting for him, murder in her eyes and her hands and the way he can still feel her arm press, crushing, against his neck.

“Regrets?” she says, one sunny morning, and knows it’s do or die, answer or die, so he slips the truth out like it’s a lie, so she’ll know it isn’t, because no one has ever known him like the little girl who grew up into the human smoking gun, takes a deep breath, slides on his smirk like armour, says, says, says—

“Ems, babe, it’s  _me_  you’re talking to, here. Not even one.”


End file.
